Success in the enterprise market place typically depends on fast, well-informed reactions to real-time information coming from internal and external sources. There is an increasing demand for real-time reporting and monitoring solutions of volatile key performance indicators (KPI). For example, in the domain of supply chain management, lags between events and reactions typically translate into higher costs. In the domain of physical security solutions, any lag between event and reaction can be catastrophic.
KPIs may be presented to users in a variety of formats. KPIs may be dynamic, and may be updated at different intervals. As new data is received, the minimum, maximum and average values, among other properties, may be affected by the new data, and the relation of the current value of the KPI to a reference value may be difficult to display in a uniform fashion. This is especially true as additional KPIs are added, and the display of multiple data dimensions may become unmanageable. The units and reference values typically differ between KPIs, and the screen real estate required to display the KPIs typically increases as the number of KPIs increases. In particular, it may become difficult for a user to be alerted to the existence of positive and negative exceptions in the KPIs. Once identified, it may also be difficult for a user to investigate a particular exception in more detail and take appropriate action based upon the investigation.